Quotations

“Eyes wide open
looking over the edge
balanced in the river.
In memory –
the smell of the resin
as I carried the bread
towards my father
into the woods.”

Dr. Peter Schmieder/ Künstlerhaus Dortmund/

1996 Gordon Brown "Das Leben der Boote", Künstlerportrait 4

“Here has been an incident something has happened to the boats, they are transformed. The hand of the artist has cut the boats into pieces and has put them to the dry and as the same time he has disclosed the threat which the boats include: the permanent ambivalence between old and new, between hope and despair. Boats do not only mean the place of the event they are in the same way his own symbol.
Exactly this on the boarder between departure and presistence Gordon Brown undertakes with his works: he gives his boats the quality for mental travel and awards them in fact their own life. But there is such a near connection with our own human existence that Brown?s boats help us to arrive at new conclusions.”

Dr. Ellen Schwinzer/ Gustav-Lübcke-Museum Hamm

1999 Gordon Brown "Das Leben der Boote"

“Resting in itself, ominous lurking, a floating steady balanced tightrope walking of human existance, is disclosed in the wooden sculptures of Gordon Brown.
(…)
While the artist includes the viewer between space and sculpture as an experience
of a field of tension, he makes his boatobjects to walk on sculptures. It is something generally that everyone can go through everyday, it is about the diametrically opposed nature of ease and heaviness, it is about energy and fields of tension which occure between two poles and rule our human beeing.”

Dr. Martin Gesing/ Stadtmuseum Beckum

2000 Gordon Brown "Skulptur-Räume"

“The at the start mentioned questions, which are raised by his sculptures, are old but always topical questions in the history of the human race. This explains why his sculptures have from time to time an archaic character, as well as wood belongs to the earliest materials, which man uses in his history. In spite of the existential meaning of the questions, his creations preserved something playful. Not difficulty and theatrical character, but variety and a kind of timeless calmness are his themes. His sculptures are no solid fixed, irrefutable truth, which proclaim a doctrine, but they are possible answers, which could have been formulated in this way, but also in another.
The travelling, the being on the way and man`s constant evolution are important aspects in Gordon Brown`s creation. That is why he uses different metaphers and symbols, which demonstrate this since grey prehistoric times like archetype pictures. To these belong the numerous boats, influencing his creation since many years. To these belong as well the seed-like or capsule-like creations, which seem like a fruit to hide the development and coming into being of new forms. How much the forms, he presents, determine man`s thinking and acting since prehistoric times, show the numerous cultic aspects of many creations, which absolutely remind of primitive people`s fetishs. They pick out as a central theme man`s existence within larger relations of sense, which we can visualize by the example of sculptures.”

Dr. Christoph Kivelitz/ Kunstverein Dortmund

2005 "Gut Schede" Kulturförderverein Wetter Ruhr

“Associatively the sculptures of Gordon Brown play around though with two archetypal motifs: the symbol of houses and boats. It is in a way about the polarity which makes you feel a need of shelter and security, settlement and durability and in the other the urge which drives you to clear boarders by new explorations and gets you to discover in never ending curiosity new shores and realizations. The symbols of houses and boats manifest in many cultures the yearning to definate someones self as a individuum and to escape of every commitment that limits the personal freedom.”

Dr. Andrea Brockmann/ Kreiskunstverein Beckum-Warendorf

2006 Gordon Brown "Skulptur Grafik" Stadtgalerie Sundern

“With intuition and sensitivity for the concealed sources of our culture Gordon Brown releases artistic narrative styled strength. In a simplifyed almost archaic shape his works develop an often meditative introverted character which is accompanyed by a emotional atmosphere and silence.
(…)
They are dream ships and dream houses that Gordon Brown presents us; they are excellent suitable to express existential questions: don?t we also often feel the conflict between leaving and coming back home, mobility and security, changing and preserving, domination of nature and helplessness in the face of the elements? Gordon Brown manages to capture sensitive this kind of feelings in his works. His boats and houses are open but nevertheless they look like they would preserve something that they don?t want to reveal to the eye. Such like that they salvage our fantasy, they salvage our dreams.”